At 4 PM this afternoon voting begins for Carlo Azeglio Ciampi's replacement as President of the Italian Republic. Despite the urgings of Berlusconi and his Casa delle libertà coalition, last week 86-year-old Ciampi let it be known that he did not intend to run for a second term. His decision is understandable, but regrettable. It is going to be very difficult to find another candidate who can command the same bipartisan support.

The problem is the unusual coincidence between the recent general elections (with the resulting change in administrations) and the simultaneous expiration of the President's seven-year mandate. (The government's mandate is for five years, so the terms do not normally coincide.) This means that this time around the election of the head of state, which would normally take place in mid-administration in a relatively relaxed and leisurely atmosphere, has become politicized to the max.

The atmosphere since the general elections has been electric, with Berlusconi refusing to admit defeat and claiming (on what grounds?) that, though he lost numerically, he was instead the "moral" victor. My barber, who voted for Berlusconi, energetically defends this point of view. He has nothing but scorn for the center left (which he identifies of course with the most rabid fringe, the trouble-makers who burned the Israeli flag on May Day and said in essente that the more carabinieri die in Nassiriya the better).

The expression that recurs in the daily headlines is "muro contro muro", unbudging confrontation. Neither coalition is prepared to parlay with the enemy. Each has nominated its own candidates.

In the case of Romano Prodi's center-left Unione, which is preparing to attempt to govern the country for as long as the opposition will allow, a single candidate has been presented, 80-year-old life senator Giorgio Napolitano, a former president of the Chamber of Deputies. Napolitano, however, represents a fall-back position, a minimal concession to the center right. The center left's previous candidate was the abrasive secretary of the Democratici di sinistra, 57-year-old Massimo D'Alema. D'Alema and Napolitano belong to the same party, the party that won the most votes in the center-left coalition. Having won the most votes, they feel entitled to at least one of the plum positions. The presidency of the Senate, however, went to Franco Marini of Francesco Rutelli's Margherita group, while the presidency of the Camera went to Fausto Bertinotti, secretary of Rifondazione comunista.

According to the logic of "lottizzazione" or the distribution of the spoils, which Prodi appears to have bought into, the sole institutional role left, the Presidency of the Republic, must be alotted to the DS. But this important role, which is supposed to be that of a mediator, has never been considered up for grabs in this way before. The constitution in fact attempts to ensure that the President will be someone who is "super partes", making a two thirds majority of all those voting (deputies, senators and representatives of the regions) necessary for his election. At least this was the hope, because a two thirds majority is necessary only for the first three rounds of voting. After that, political realism clicks in, and on the fourth vote a simple majority will carry the day. This means of course that, if no across-the-aisle consensus emerges from the first three votes (the most likely outcome at the moment), the coalition that (barely) won the election can impose its own candidate. Which may be still be Giorgio Napolitano. But it could also be Massimo D'Alema.

Why do we use the term "Byzantine" when "Italian" would do just as well?